Choices & Iron
by B.W.T
Summary: Sarah Williams has been traveling for a very long time and now she has a choice.


Sarah Williams stood on a cliff's edge. She wore torn jeans and an age-worn shirt as well as any queen would wear a dress sewn with diamonds and pearls.

She held her head as if a crown of goblin-wrought gold graced it, rather than the cut upon her brow.

To her, the sea crashing below was a vibrant emerald green, tainted with the bloody red of the sunset reflecting on the water. The ground beneath her feet sang with ancient magic, old as the earth, the magic that threaded through the world to its molten core – that crackled along the highest mountain peaks. She dug her bare toes in. Her shoes had broken long ago.

The air stung her cheeks with the cold. The sun dipped lower – sending the rays across the sky like splashes of fresh crimson from a throat.

As the very last of the rays played across the sky, Sarah Williams, who had stood so still, became a blur of motion – she stepped back, bringing her arm above her head, fist clenched tightly, and then she threw something – and as it left her hand it snapped with magic, cracking like lightening, and flew into the emerald sea, to be lost below the waves.

Sarah Williams, who had been so fast, stood still again. She raised her hand to study it, the burns across her palm – _she'd picked up an iron pan from the counter to cook breakfast, and had screamed at the pain _– and the thin blue veins that showed so starkly at her wrist.

There was a band of skin lighter then the rest on her ring finger, from the ring she'd just thrown into the ocean – _diamond, expensive, and he'd asked her father's permission and knelt down on one knee, and oh how she'd dreamed of being normal with him._

"Checking battle scares, precious?" Against her cold back, hot as a fire, firm as a stone, and his hand is across her stomach, pulling her back against him, his breath in her ear as he laughs – he smells of honey and spice and magic, and a shower of glittering sparkles rain down from his hair across her dirty shirt.

She smiles, and it is regale and it is playful, and it is Sarah who entered the Labyrinth and Sarah who left, and it is Sarah who raced from her apartment as if the hounds of hell followed her heels, though it was only her fiancé, calling her name (and who still searches for her, who has appeared on every major network, who has turned her disappearance into a cause, who has started an organization to help find the people who're lost, who talks so often of her, who still wears a ring upon his finger _for her_).

And it is Sarah who wandered the earth, fed by its magic, looking for something she could not name. Who dreamed at night of ballrooms and dances, who began to walk as if she ruled the world before her, who struck those who saw her as a princess' on a quest.

"Yes." She says, and leans into his hold, her straight posture relaxing. Jareth runs a gloved hand down her arm, pulling the sleeve back, surveying her skin, the bruises she won't allow to fade – _her fiancé, grabbing her arm, telling her magic isn't real, begging her to see sense, even as behind him goblins growl, as Sarah sees the lie of his faithfulness dance across his lips (like she sees all lies, like splotches of condemning ink on mortal's faces), telling her she's only a little lost (but she hasn't been lost since the Labyrinth, always knows her way, always sees a helpful creature to point her to where she wants to go, because Sarah is never truly alone anymore)._

Jareth brushes the soft leather of his gloved fingers across her skin and the fingertip shaped bruises fade. He presses his lips to the shell of her ear, "Have you had your fill?" He asks.

The stars above them twinkle against a blue-black sky, the moon full and brilliant, casting its reflection upon the calming sea.

"I could be successful here." Sarah says, "I could have a mansion, with a garden and a pool. I could have a staff. I could drink the best wines, eat the juiciest peaches." Her lips quirk. "I could wear silks and satins, dress my neck in the most valuable stones and metals. I could make it so iron wouldn't be allowed within a hundred miles of my home."

"Yes," Jareth says, his body relaxed against hers, "you could."

They did not say the rest: that Sarah was choosing to return to the Labyrinth. The method of her travels had been her choice. She was Jareth's equal in this, he was not saving her from a cruel and unforgiving world.

"Shall we return home, precious?" He asks, stepping away from her for the first time, his boots silent against the earth.

"Yes."


End file.
